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There are two statements here regarding things that have happened: > the Core Team placing themselves unaccountable to anyone but themselves > we have been un

by iamed2 5y ago

There are two statements here regarding things that have happened: > the Core Team placing themselves unaccountable to anyone but themselves > we have been unable to enforce the Rust Code of Conduct to the standards the community expects of us and to the standards we hold ourselves to It's possible that there were CoC violations that they were not able to moderate, that the actions available to them were limited (e.g., they would have initiated a ban but they were not able to ban a core team member), that a core team member intervened to prevent effective moderation, or that the core team prevented the mod team from being able to access official core team channels in order to moderate. Seems to be a wide variety of possibilities and leaving the nature of the situation ambiguous* will likely make it difficult for a new mod team. I hope the now-former mod team are open and direct with new or potential mod team members about the environment they're entering. * I do think it's right for the mod team to not reveal the specifics in public; that would likely provoke targeted harassment and make the situation much worse

unethical_ban 5y ago
> I do think it's right for the mod team to not reveal the specifics in public; that would likely provoke targeted harassment and make the situation much worse Instead, we have countless people bantering and taking "sides" about hypotheticals. In a world mostly devoid of secrets on the web, I think they could have, at the least, masked identities and summarized the issue.
mzs 5y ago
The same mod team member is strongly implying elsewhere that such a potential violation did occur: >burntsushi ripgrep · rust 31 points 2 hours ago >If we had an answer to your implied question it will necessarily reveal things (via obvious logical inferences) that we carefully avoided revealing in our statement. https://old.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/qzme1z/moderation_team_resignation/hlo9er5/ https://old.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/qzme1z/moderation_tea...
- monopoledance 5y ago
  On a side note, I absolutely love the Reddit Rust community. It's somehow devoid of all the anger, loaded harshness of pretty much any other subreddit or HN. So fucking respectful and friendly there. (At least, every time I visited.) I can only assume rustaceans are generally better people! Hanging out there is like a resort within the internet. Please, if you go there leave your edgy internet persona behind, but bring your bathing suit and a tasty cocktail, instead - enjoy life and programming.
  - styluss 5y ago
    FYI r/rust also has a mod team
    - monopoledance 5y ago
      I am sure they are doing a stellar job I am thankful for. However, you see very little [deleted] around, or many down-voted comments. I think it's really the community to praise, and their practiced tone and aspirations.
hintymad 5y ago
It seems there is an internal communication channel for the Rust team? I thought that the moderation team would moderate discussions in open forums like mailing list or issue trackers, but in this case we don't know what happened behind closed doors.
zozbot234 5y ago
> they would have initiated a ban but they were not able to ban a core team member If that was the case, the obvious response would be a formal statement of rebuke and censure wrt. the offending member's behavior, which would clarify that such things aren't welcome in the project. The fact that we aren't getting anything close to that extreme suggests that this is in fact a big fat nothingburger. (Unless you think that CoC violations are so widespread in the Rust Core Team that naming the specific people involved would have made no discernible difference, but so far we've seen nothing to indicate that.)
- babyblueblanket 5y ago
  It might be that they cannot censure the offending member in any capacity, due to their core team member status. In that case, resignation is the only thing they have to effectively rebuke behavior.
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    As pointed out on r/rust, the approved Governance RFC states quite unambiguously that the Core Team is accountable to the community wrt. their behavior: > Subteam, and especially core team members are also held to a high standard of behavior. Part of the reason to separate the moderation subteam is to ensure that CoC violations by Rust's leadership be addressed through the same independent body of moderators. https://rust-lang.github.io/rfcs/1068-rust-governance.html https://rust-lang.github.io/rfcs/1068-rust-governance.html
  - loeg 5y ago
    Public shaming by respected community members is probably somewhat effective. However, they chose not to do that here. Without knowing more, I have to trust their judgment. But I recognize that it’s unsatisfying.
    - whimsicalism 5y ago
      Is there any possibility they are under formal legal contract ie. NDA? Don't know how formal the Rust organization is setup/whether that would be a part in the process of joining the moderation team.
mlindner 5y ago
Well this person is on the core team and has said many horrible things in the past and so it's possible this is indicative of the culture of members of the core team. https://archive.md/VEtHu https://archive.md/VEtHu (from 2017) But this is trying to imply that past crimes are evidence of future crimes, which I'm not a huge fan of, so take it with a grain of salt. But it's a useful data point at least for me.
pg_1234 5y ago
Sounds like the people trying to play social politics had a hissy fit because they couldn't control the people doing the actual work. Fantastic.
- stouset 5y ago
  You might care to notice that the resignation was announced by Andrew Gallant—more commonly known as BurntSushi[1]—who is one of the most well-respected, talented, and prolific contributors in the wider Rust community. Amongst other things, they are the author of ripgrep[2], the regex[3] crate, and the byteorder[4] crate. They have multiple projects which are amongst the most-downloaded crates[5] in the Rust ecosystem. One would struggle to find more than a handful of people who have done more "actual work" for Rust than Andrew. [1]: https://blog.burntsushi.net/about https://blog.burntsushi.net/about [2]: https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep [3]: https://github.com/rust-lang/regex https://github.com/rust-lang/regex [4]: https://github.com/BurntSushi/byteorder https://github.com/BurntSushi/byteorder [5]: https://crates.io/crates?sort=recent-downloads https://crates.io/crates?sort=recent-downloads
  - VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
    As well as xsv and the csv crate.
    - stouset 5y ago
      And, apparently, volunteering to be on the moderation team.
  - tcard 5y ago
    He's also a prominent contributor to the Go ecosystem. https://github.com/BurntSushi/toml https://github.com/BurntSushi/toml https://github.com/BurntSushi/xgb https://github.com/BurntSushi/xgb https://github.com/BurntSushi/wingo https://github.com/BurntSushi/wingo
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> It's possible that there were CoC violations that they were not able to moderate, that the actions available to them were limited (e.g., they would have initiated a ban but they were not able to ban a core team member), that a core team member intervened to prevent effective moderation, or that the core team prevented the mod team from being able to access official core team channels in order to moderate. It's not clear to me that they're claiming a violation occurred. The wording is vague, but one interpretation is that they simply wanted more control over the core team but the core team didn't want it structured that way, so the mod team resigned. IMO, it would be strange to make a moderation team the highest authority in an organizational structure. I don't really agree with their demand to be the ultimate authority over everyone. Violation or not, I wish they could have come to an agreement without throwing ambiguous accusations out into public as they quit. Between this and the "I refuse to let Amazon define Rust" post a few months ago we're getting a lot of drama with few, if any, details. There's a lot of "just trust me, but don't listen to what anyone else says about the situation" in this post. Their closing statement asking everyone to not trust anything the core team says makes this feel particularly petty: > We recommend that the broader Rust community and the future Mod Team exercise extreme skepticism of any statements by the Core Team (or members thereof) claiming to illuminate the situation. I really hope that drama like this doesn't become one of the defining features of the Rust community.
- whatshisface 5y ago
  I wish they were saying "trust me." What they're actually saying is, "I won't tell you anything, and don't trust anyone who does."
- politician 5y ago
  This kind of drama is already a defining feature of the Rust community. They can’t go 6 months without some kind of incident like this. It would be a positive if they could have a BDFL or corporate sponsorship to structure the community going forward because it doesn’t seem like the current community approach really works in practice. I realize that’s probably not possible at this point though.. unless maybe Microsoft steps in. Disclosure: I am an outside observer, and I find Rust to be excessively syntax dense. Take my opinion with a grain of salt.

by iamed2 5y ago

unethical_ban 5y ago

> I do think it's right for the mod team to not reveal the specifics in public; that would likely provoke targeted harassment and make the situation much worse Instead, we have countless people bantering and taking "sides" about hypotheticals. In a world mostly devoid of secrets on the web, I think they could have, at the least, masked identities and summarized the issue.

mzs 5y ago

The same mod team member is strongly implying elsewhere that such a potential violation did occur: >burntsushi ripgrep · rust 31 points 2 hours ago >If we had an answer to your implied question it will necessarily reveal things (via obvious logical inferences) that we carefully avoided revealing in our statement. https://old.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/qzme1z/moderation_team_resignation/hlo9er5/ https://old.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/qzme1z/moderation_tea...

monopoledance 5y ago
On a side note, I absolutely love the Reddit Rust community. It's somehow devoid of all the anger, loaded harshness of pretty much any other subreddit or HN. So fucking respectful and friendly there. (At least, every time I visited.) I can only assume rustaceans are generally better people! Hanging out there is like a resort within the internet. Please, if you go there leave your edgy internet persona behind, but bring your bathing suit and a tasty cocktail, instead - enjoy life and programming.
- styluss 5y ago
  FYI r/rust also has a mod team
  - monopoledance 5y ago
    I am sure they are doing a stellar job I am thankful for. However, you see very little [deleted] around, or many down-voted comments. I think it's really the community to praise, and their practiced tone and aspirations.

hintymad 5y ago

It seems there is an internal communication channel for the Rust team? I thought that the moderation team would moderate discussions in open forums like mailing list or issue trackers, but in this case we don't know what happened behind closed doors.

zozbot234 5y ago

> they would have initiated a ban but they were not able to ban a core team member If that was the case, the obvious response would be a formal statement of rebuke and censure wrt. the offending member's behavior, which would clarify that such things aren't welcome in the project. The fact that we aren't getting anything close to that extreme suggests that this is in fact a big fat nothingburger. (Unless you think that CoC violations are so widespread in the Rust Core Team that naming the specific people involved would have made no discernible difference, but so far we've seen nothing to indicate that.)

babyblueblanket 5y ago
It might be that they cannot censure the offending member in any capacity, due to their core team member status. In that case, resignation is the only thing they have to effectively rebuke behavior.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  As pointed out on r/rust, the approved Governance RFC states quite unambiguously that the Core Team is accountable to the community wrt. their behavior: > Subteam, and especially core team members are also held to a high standard of behavior. Part of the reason to separate the moderation subteam is to ensure that CoC violations by Rust's leadership be addressed through the same independent body of moderators. https://rust-lang.github.io/rfcs/1068-rust-governance.html https://rust-lang.github.io/rfcs/1068-rust-governance.html
- loeg 5y ago
  Public shaming by respected community members is probably somewhat effective. However, they chose not to do that here. Without knowing more, I have to trust their judgment. But I recognize that it’s unsatisfying.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    Is there any possibility they are under formal legal contract ie. NDA? Don't know how formal the Rust organization is setup/whether that would be a part in the process of joining the moderation team.

mlindner 5y ago

Well this person is on the core team and has said many horrible things in the past and so it's possible this is indicative of the culture of members of the core team. https://archive.md/VEtHu https://archive.md/VEtHu (from 2017) But this is trying to imply that past crimes are evidence of future crimes, which I'm not a huge fan of, so take it with a grain of salt. But it's a useful data point at least for me.

pg_1234 5y ago

Sounds like the people trying to play social politics had a hissy fit because they couldn't control the people doing the actual work. Fantastic.

stouset 5y ago
You might care to notice that the resignation was announced by Andrew Gallant—more commonly known as BurntSushi[1]—who is one of the most well-respected, talented, and prolific contributors in the wider Rust community. Amongst other things, they are the author of ripgrep[2], the regex[3] crate, and the byteorder[4] crate. They have multiple projects which are amongst the most-downloaded crates[5] in the Rust ecosystem. One would struggle to find more than a handful of people who have done more "actual work" for Rust than Andrew. [1]: https://blog.burntsushi.net/about https://blog.burntsushi.net/about [2]: https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep [3]: https://github.com/rust-lang/regex https://github.com/rust-lang/regex [4]: https://github.com/BurntSushi/byteorder https://github.com/BurntSushi/byteorder [5]: https://crates.io/crates?sort=recent-downloads https://crates.io/crates?sort=recent-downloads
- VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
  As well as xsv and the csv crate.
  - stouset 5y ago
    And, apparently, volunteering to be on the moderation team.
- tcard 5y ago
  He's also a prominent contributor to the Go ecosystem. https://github.com/BurntSushi/toml https://github.com/BurntSushi/toml https://github.com/BurntSushi/xgb https://github.com/BurntSushi/xgb https://github.com/BurntSushi/wingo https://github.com/BurntSushi/wingo

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> It's possible that there were CoC violations that they were not able to moderate, that the actions available to them were limited (e.g., they would have initiated a ban but they were not able to ban a core team member), that a core team member intervened to prevent effective moderation, or that the core team prevented the mod team from being able to access official core team channels in order to moderate. It's not clear to me that they're claiming a violation occurred. The wording is vague, but one interpretation is that they simply wanted more control over the core team but the core team didn't want it structured that way, so the mod team resigned. IMO, it would be strange to make a moderation team the highest authority in an organizational structure. I don't really agree with their demand to be the ultimate authority over everyone. Violation or not, I wish they could have come to an agreement without throwing ambiguous accusations out into public as they quit. Between this and the "I refuse to let Amazon define Rust" post a few months ago we're getting a lot of drama with few, if any, details. There's a lot of "just trust me, but don't listen to what anyone else says about the situation" in this post. Their closing statement asking everyone to not trust anything the core team says makes this feel particularly petty: > We recommend that the broader Rust community and the future Mod Team exercise extreme skepticism of any statements by the Core Team (or members thereof) claiming to illuminate the situation. I really hope that drama like this doesn't become one of the defining features of the Rust community.

whatshisface 5y ago
I wish they were saying "trust me." What they're actually saying is, "I won't tell you anything, and don't trust anyone who does."
politician 5y ago
This kind of drama is already a defining feature of the Rust community. They can’t go 6 months without some kind of incident like this. It would be a positive if they could have a BDFL or corporate sponsorship to structure the community going forward because it doesn’t seem like the current community approach really works in practice. I realize that’s probably not possible at this point though.. unless maybe Microsoft steps in. Disclosure: I am an outside observer, and I find Rust to be excessively syntax dense. Take my opinion with a grain of salt.